Law Commons^™

Hierarchy, Race & Gender In Legal Scholarly Networks, Nicholson W. Price, Keerthana Nunna, Jonathan Tietz

Articles

A potent myth of legal academic scholarship is that it is mostly meritocratic and mostly solitary. Reality is more complicated. In this Article, we plumb the networks of knowledge co-production in legal academia by analyzing the star footnotes that appear at the beginning of most law review articles. Acknowledgments paint a rich picture of both the currency of scholarly credit and the relationships among scholars. Building on others’ prior work characterizing the potent impact of hierarchy, race, and gender in legal academia more generally, we examine the patterns of scholarly networks and probe the effects of those factors. The landscape …

Stereotypes, Sexism And Superhuman Faculty, Teneille R. Brown

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

This symposium article explores how law professors with caretaking responsibilities struggled so greatly during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Because legal academia prioritizes masculine ideals of competence over warmth, faculty were expected to suppress their emotions and mental health needs in order to maintain the appearance of competence. While students were allowed to be seen as vulnerable individuals needing accommodations, we did not extend this same compassion to our faculty colleagues. To explain why the treatment was so disparate, I incorporated existing research on the stereotype content model (SCM) and psychological theories of dehumanization. These theories help to …

Foreword: Behind The Classroom: An Examination Of Law Schools In The 21st Century, Brandon Stump

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

No abstract provided.

Afterword: What's Next? Into A Third Decade Of Latcrit Theory, Community, And Praxis, Steven W. Bender, Francisco Valdes, Jorge R. Roig, Jasmine Gonzalez Rose, Saru Matambanadzo, Roberto Corrada, Shelley Cavalieri, Tayyab Mahmud, Zsea Bowmani, Anthony E. Varona

Scholarly Works

In this multi-vocal Afterword, we reflect-personally and collectively to help chart renewed agendas toward and through a third decade of LatCrit theory, community, and praxis. This personal collective exercise illustrates and reconsiders the functions, guideposts, values, and postulates for our shared programmatic work a framework for our daily work as individuals and teams through our portfolio of projects, which in turn emerged as a "reflection and projection of LatCrit theory, community and praxis." These early anchors expressly encompassed (1) a call to recognize and accept the inevitable political nature of U.S. legal scholarship; (2) a concomitant call toward anti-subordination praxis …

Tenure Redux, Jacqueline D. Lipton

Articles

This essay is a reflection on some of the questions that arose during the author's tenure process that are likely pertinent to others on the tenure track today particularly with respect to questions about writing style in tenure pieces, and on whether early scholars should focus on general law reviews or specialty journals--depending on their areas of expertise--or a combination of both. It also reflects on choice of subject matter for tenure work, and whether some of that work may or may not stand the test of time, as well as on differences between the U.S. legal scholarship process and …

Encouraging Engaged Scholarship: Perspectives From An Associate Dean For Research, Sonia K. Katyal

Sonia Katyal

No abstract provided.

The Market Myth And Pay Disparity In Legal Academia, Paula A. Monopoli

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Ph.D. Rises In American Law Schools, 1960-2011: What Does It Mean For Legal Education?, Justin Mccrary, Joy Milligan, James Cleith Phillips

Faculty Scholarship

At a time when some perceive law schools to be in crisis and the future of legal education is being debated, the structural shift toward law professors with Ph.Ds is an important, under-examined trend. In this article, we use an original dataset to analyze law school Ph.D hiring trends and consider their potential consequences. Over the last fifty years the proportion of law professors with Ph.Ds has risen dramatically. Over a third of new professors hired at elite law schools in recent years come with doctoral degrees in fields outside the law. We use our data to consider the scope, …

Encouraging Engaged Scholarship: Perspectives From An Associate Dean For Research, Sonia K. Katyal

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Lawyers And Spoiled Identity, Paul Campos

Publications

No abstract provided.

Legal Academia And The Blindness Of The Elites, Paul Campos

Publications

No abstract provided.

Self-Congratulation And Scholarship, Paul Campos

Publications

Professor Jay Silver’s criticism of the reform proposals put forward in Brian Tamanaha’s book Failing Law Schools displays some characteristic weaknesses of American legal academic culture. These weaknesses include a tendency to make bold assertions about the value of legal scholarship and the effectiveness of law school pedagogy, while at the same time providing no support for these assertions beyond a willingness to repeat self-congratulatory platitudes about who professors are and what we do. The high costs for our students of the current scholarly expectations at American law schools are clear. What is not clear is whether those costs are …

Teaching Law In The University – Shaping Future Generations, Jack Tsen-Ta Lee

Jack Tsen-Ta LEE

This paper, which was written for the book The Practice of Law (Singapore: LexisNexis, 2011), gives an insight into what teaching law in a Singapore university is like from the perspective of a young law academic. It considers various aspects of an academic’s job – research and writing, teaching, and administration, for instance – and provides pointers on how one might best position oneself for an academic career.

Deconstructing The Rejection Letter: A Look At Elitism In Article Selection, Dan Subotnik, Glen Lazar

Dan Subotnik

No abstract provided.

Professionalism’S Triple E Query: Is Legal Academia Enhancing, Eluding, Or Evading Professionalism?, Nicola A. Boothe-Perry

Journal Publications

The focus of this Article will be law schools' specific role and responsibility in the propaedeutic instruction of professionalism in the legal community. This article is composed of five sections. Part II of this paper discusses the ubiquitous yet illusory definition of professionalism. Part III addresses the practicing bar's approach to the issue of professionalism, reflecting in Subsection A on the public's perception of lawyers, and discussing in Subsection B the response of the governing bodies to such perception. Part IV highlights the role of legal education in fostering professionalism, discussing in Subsection A the fertile ground for change in …

A Derivatives Market In Legal Academia, Paul H. Edelman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Building on the success of derivatives markets in the financial arena, I show how similar markets can be used to hedge risk in legal academia. Prudent use of these markets will generate cash, mitigate errors in hiring, and increase the academic prestige of law schools. In short, they can do for legal academia what they have already done to the financial world.

Dunya, Marianne Wesson

Publications

No abstract provided.

A Teacher's Teacher, Lonnie T. Brown Jr.

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Jackie Robinson once said, "A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives." By that measure, Harold Maier has led an extraordinarily important life. I know that he has had a profound impact on innumerable students throughout his career and upon one in particular. I continue to learn because Professor Maier inspired me, and I teach others because of the wonderful example he set. Though he has now left the classroom, Professor Maier's legacy as a teacher will always endure through the countless minds he has awakened and lives he has touched.

Some Preliminary Statistical, Qualitative, And Anecdotal Findings Of An Empirical Study Of Collegiality Among Law Professors, Michael L. Seigel

ExpressO

This article is an empirically-based follow-up to a piece I published last year in the Journal of Legal Education entitled, On Collegiality, 54 J. Legal Educ. 406 (2004). It provides insight into the process of conducting empirical research and sets forth some preliminary – yet very intriguing – data and qualitative information gleaned from a survey responded to by more than 1200 law professors nationwide. The survey addressed a wide range of topics related to collegiality and job satisfaction in the legal-academic profession.

“Kulturkampf[S]” Or “Fit[S] Of Spite”?: Taking The Academic Culture Wars Seriously, Sylvia R. Lazos

Scholarly Works

Polarization and heated debate within legal academia are nothing new. Some might argue that vigorous contentiousness, even if not always civil, is essential to a healthy intellectual culture. Others would note that lawyers, legal academics especially, are a highly contentious bunch with a reputation for aggressive behavior.

Fundamentally, this Article asks whether strife and disagreement are a necessary part of academic discourse. The Article describes the academic Kulturkampfs aimed at Critical Race Theory that have taken place in the last ten years both outside of and within the Critical Race Theory (CRT) movement. The Article particularly examines what it is …

The Transformation Of An Academic Discipline: Law Professors In The Past And Future (Or Toy Story Too), Stephen M. Feldman

Stephen M. Feldman

Since the post-Civil War era law professors have perceived themselves first and foremost as lawyers. For the most part, during that time, we were lawyers teaching students about the law and about how to practice law. But we were not merely lawyers teaching apprentices. We were law professors, mostly in university-affiliated law schools, who wrote scholarly articles and books. Even so, our scholarship revolved around our perception of ourselves as lawyers. We wrote to reform and to improve the law. Through our scholarship we directly participated in the legal system, in legal and judicial practices, by advising lawyers and judges, …

Foreword: The Question Of Process, J. Harvie Wilkinson Iii

Michigan Law Review

Many in the legal profession have abandoned the great questions of legal process. This is too bad. How a decision is reached can be as important as what the decision is. In an increasingly diverse country with many competing visions of the good, it is critical for law to aspire to agreement on process - a task both more achievable than agreement on substance and more suited to our profession than waving the banners of ideological truth. By process, I mean the institutional routes by which we in America reach our most crucial decisions. In other words, process is our …

Beyond Black And White: Selected Writings By Asian Americans Within The Critical Race Theory Movement Perspective., Harvey Gee

St. Mary's Law Journal

A new generation of progressive intellectuals has evolved, attempting to transform the manner in which law, race, and racial power are understood and discussed in America. The latter half of the twentieth century proved to be a time of profound demographic changes. Racial and political reform policies of the post-modern Civil Rights Movement failed to fully respond to these dramatic social changes. A theory was created to address social racism because the “color-blind” model posited by the Supreme Court of the United States perpetuated racism by supporting the existing hierarchy. Critical Race Theory attempts to tackle these dramatic social changes …

Baseline Questions In Legal Reasoning: The Example Of Property In Jobs, Jack M. Beermann, Joseph William Singer

Faculty Scholarship

In what follows, we critique at-will employment by focusing on the baselines that underlie the analysis. Our ultimate goal is to develop persuasive arguments to move courts and businesses to provide greater job security for workers. One possible reason the courts have been so reluctant to change employment law is that judges analyze job security issues from the standpoint of a series of baselines which have the effect of creating a presumption against job security that is almost impossible to overcome. These baseline assumptions effectively place the burden of proof on advocates of job security.

Judges fail to recognize that …